


still feasting on all this (bones and sinew and teeth, too)

by clytemnestras



Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic, Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Dark, Dreams and Nightmares, Fucked Up, Gen, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, canon-typical weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-26 06:29:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7563832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clytemnestras/pseuds/clytemnestras
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Breaking on her fucked suspension and tiredness it is there, bumfuck nowhere just outside Henrietta - on the second day, not the third - Renee finds God on the roadside.</i><br/> </p><p>  <i>And He is bleeding.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	still feasting on all this (bones and sinew and teeth, too)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kwritten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/gifts).



> for the [morbid and spooky](http://scorpiod1.livejournal.com/108115.html#comments) dark!ficathon
> 
> insp: _jesus with his skinny elbows and knobby knees and too-wide smile._  
>  _jesus pulling me back from the road, jesus putting his hands down my throat to help me vomit up prozac, jesus taking my temperature in the middle of the night, cool hand on my forehead._  
>  _i kissed him once and told him i’d rather be kissing a girl_  
>  _and he gave me a glass of water and a soft smile and said he’d rather be kissing a boy._
> 
>  
> 
> (set in a fictional spring break just before both series)
> 
> it's as weird and nonsensical as can be expected. expect some gore.

It would make a better story of it was at the beginning, if she threw her knives into the river for the touch of his hands between her shoulder blades where the wings were slashed off, once. It would be biblical, perhaps, if she crawled into the river beside him, head shaved and the weaker for it as his bloody hands washed her sins clean. 

 

But the universe is a dick, and it happens somewhere in the swampy middle when everything is at its hardest and there are ghosts clinging to and gnawing her bones.

 

Faith has six hands all twisted around her windpipe and the rusted car is an extension of her body. It is Easter. Renee is running.

 

*

 

Breaking on her fucked suspension and tiredness it is there, bumfuck nowhere just outside Henrietta - on the second day, not the third - Renee finds God on the roadside. 

And He is bleeding.

 

*

 

God is careful, vicious, mouth like sin and soul like Andrew and He has blood on his knuckles and a savage smile slashed through His face.

 

He tells her the car is an insult to mechanics even when He lets himself inside, spreading across the backseat and adding to the stains.

 

She asks who hurt Him and His eyes light like wildfires that tear through his features and He says,  _ The devil, couldn't you tell? _

 

Her fingers don't touch her crucifix, not even once.

 

(They drift for quick bursts, five, then three, then six seconds toward the knife strapped around her waist before settling back on the steering wheel. Aching, still.)

 

She doesn't take Him home. He makes her stop on the edge of forest and winks as He climbs out, leaning forward to touch her fingers. 

 

“Don't do anything I wouldn't,” He says, hand glancing quick against the knife and her heart takes residence in her throat right there, salt and copper rolling across her tongue.

 

*

 

(Renee is a dark thing and she dreams the world bone sharp, trees and birds and screams when there is blood in the river and in the rest stop sink. Her shoulders are warped like wings might have hung there before being shredded off.  Her hands are sweet and they are cold.

 

Blood splatter always warm against her throat like her body wants to bathe in it or like her fingers want to drift the knife to the soft skin and slice until she is blood all over, airless and falling toward earth.

 

She dreams stigmata scarred hands on her shoulders and this is God right there on the ground with her pulling the knife out or digging it in.)

 

*

 

It's fortuitous that on the same road, same town, same bloody nose and knuckles, she finds the devil.

 

*

 

Henrietta is a small place but not a quiet one and she can touch it all under her fingers and and beneath her feet and singing, aching. 

 

Satan or something like him is sitting and smoking, pupils blown.

 

She pulls over and lowers her sunglasses, rosary beads twisting on the rearview mirror.

 

“Keep driving, princess”, he says, lisping over the smoke. 

 

She wakes up with her head presses against the car window and can't tell what was dreamed, the dark in his eyes or the jacket matching the one curled up on her back seat, or the tingling on her mouth that wants, suddenly.

 

*

 

Twelve texts from Dan and three hundred and twenty four from Allison dig themselves into her ribs even if they go unread for days at a time.

 

She pulls into a garage and asks to use the bathroom and cleans the dreams away, blood on her fingers and dirt on her tongue.

 

When she comes out with new skin she finds Him there, leaning against a sandy boy whose eyes are sleepy and hands are wounded, the Angel Michael like an aura on oil-stained skin. It's a dizzy, grey-and-sunshine day, nothing real but the weight of clothes in her body.

 

“Still here?”

 

She nods. “Think I’m on the road home.”

 

The sandy boy, Angel on his tongue says “Hope we all are.”

 

He laughs. “Parrish you sappy fuck,” half spite and half soul He curls in toward him in a way that looks illicit. Looks hungry.

 

Renee turns her gaze toward the ground.

 

“Hey, you want me to fix the suspension on this thing?” Sandy boy - Parrish, of  _ course _ \- says, wringing his oil-slick hands.

 

_ No,  _ she thinks,  _ get the fuck out of here before you hurt someone. Put your home on your back and run. _

 

“Ronan -” Parrish squirms, nudges his elbow back to where His cold hands dig under Parrish's shirt. 

 

“She's got places to go,” Ronan -  _ Ronan -  _ says. His eyes burn again, carving into her. “Don't you?”

 

*

 

(She dreams trees spin inside her and beg her to calm where the bones resist and beg to kill she is red all over, even in the violets and lilies, she is red, red, red.)

 

*

 

Dan calls when she is sleeping and there is silver all over her hands.

 

_ Don't. Please don't. I love your rough hands and your soft throat, just. Don't be stupid. Come home. _

 

None of it sounds like her and it all sounds like death inside her and her fingers twitch again for her knives and she imagines Andrew standing over her carrying a stopwatch, smiling.

 

_ They call us The Monsters for a reason, darling. _

 

*

 

Ronan is sitting on her bonnet when she wakes, holding a flask of coffee that she can smell, deep over the pollen.

 

“I died here once”, he says, fingers blooming blood like dirt does flowers. “One of me did. I tried to again, vodka and pills and quietness in my head.”

 

“And yet?” She opens the door slowly, climbs atop the car. 

 

He opens the flask and hands it to her, pulling a smaller, silver one from his pocket and taking a long swig. “Fuck knows.”

 

She laughs. “I’ve died twelve times in public bathrooms, you’re not special.”

 

“Yeah well, you’re older, you’ve had more time to kill.” He says it full of spite and humour, drinking himself away just shy of a Sunday.

 

“How did you -”

 

He taps his nose and hands her the other flask and she drinks long into the day, gold all on her back.

 

*

 

They hold hands, once, spread out on the yellowing grass and with closed eyes.

 

They fall asleep like that but they don't, not at all, and everything opens up, green and tar-filled and gorgeous-terrible. She is dreaming but not dreaming he is still between her hands and she thinks of leaning forward even though it would be wrong, would be betrayal like every other kiss has been (Dan’s thighs peppered always, Alison’s hips slick.)

 

When she wakes she is alone, a bloody, severed heart between her fingers.

 

She doesn't scream. Wouldn't dream of it. Her fingers sink deep into the muscle until it warps and it is up to her wrist, a watermark of gore.

 

It is dark and she remembers the feeling of blood in her hands like this, warm and hungry and quiet. The dark has eyes on her, clapping in the distance like the devil or God, it hardly matters. Renee smiles.

  
It’s a long drive home.

**Author's Note:**

> come chat with me on tumblr [@bohemicns](https://) if you feel so inclined


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